Morning Briefing: Why Bowe Bergdahl Matters

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I'll be on Outnumbered on Fox News today at 12:00 pm ET. Be sure to tune in. Thanks, Erick

Why Bowe Bergdahl Matters Barack Obama traded five Taliban soldiers for Bowe Bergdahl. Despite State Department statements to the contrary, we know at least one of those Taliban headed back out to kill Americans. But the Bergdahl situation matters at a different level than that. It matters because the White House, when confronted by who Bergdahl once, sought to smear the people who pointed out he was a deserter instead of dealing with reality. The smears included attacking honorable American soldiers who dared to point out their colleague was a deserter. Read More

Cruz, Paul, and Rubio — Time to Lead Senate Republicans think they have push through a budget that does not manage spending, funds Obamacare, and contemplates the Obamacare tax increases. In fact, the budget does nothing to change the direction of the country. Read More Sponsored

They Need to Be Told Thank You Yesterday, State House Republicans in Georgia defied the left and many of their major donors. They did the right thing. Everyone, myself included, heard they were going to cave. Everyone, myself included, knew a deal was in the works to gut the religious freedom legislation. In fact, during a committee hearing on the matter yesterday, they substituted a strong religious liberty bill for a weaker version. Then they put back in all the strong provisions giving Georgians something they can be proud of. Yesterday was a big win for religious liberty in Georgia. The fight is not over. The legislation must still go to a full committee, a vote in the House, and possibly a conference committee, but House Republicans in Georgia did a very good job yesterday. They've gotten a lot of heat from a lot of us to do the right thing. They did it. Now please tell them thank you. Read More

The Eeyore Caucus is Set to Kill the Sequester for Good I am, for the most part, a partisan hack. Accordingly, the last two months have been difficult because in an ideal world I would spend all or almost all my time criticizing Democrats. However, Republicans have failed so spectacularly and repeatedly since taking over control of Congress that it's difficult to find the time and energy. The latest of these capitulations concerns Republican surrender on one of the few good things the Republicans were able to accomplish during the first 6 years of Obama's Presidency: the sequester. In the name of removing the sequester from defense-related spending, the Republicans are set to just jettison the whole thing altogether, which is probably the result they desired in the first place. Read More

Sponsored New Conventional Wisdom: Ted Cruz can't win Evangelical Christians Watching liberals trying to explain conservatives to other liberals is, a Jonah Goldberg once observed, a Gorillas in the Mist phenomenon. It is as though a scientist is describing the behavior or an alien species and imputing their own explanation of what causes the species to behave as it does. When the conservative subspecies is religious the outcome is even more hilarious. This is what you can readily observe with the reaction of the left to the reaction Ted Cruz received at Liberty University this week. For reasons unknown to anyone but the person that hired her, a chick named Elizabeth Stoker Bruening has become the "go-to" person whenever it is necessary to explain religious people, particularly conservative ones, to the very liberal and very un-churched (I would say atheist) audience of The New Republic. When Ted Cruz announced his candidacy to an enthusiastic audience of mostly Evangelical Christians at Liberty University, Ms. Bruening took on the job of explaining why Ted Cruz was going to have trouble winning over Evangelicals. Read More

Jeb Bush adviser vows 'death to the Zionist Entity' Well, he didn't exactly say it in those words but the meaning was the same. At a meeting of J Street, an allegedly pro-Israel group devoted to the eradication of Israel, Jeb Bush foreign policy adviser, Jim Baker, warned really, really bad stuff would happen if Israel did not pursue a two state solution. Read More

Iran isn't Providing Access or Information about its Nuke Sites There are plenty of reasons to believe that Iran is not seriously interested in a deal on nuclear weapons. Ayatollah Khamenei's recent reiteration of his call for "Death to America" ought to be evidence enough of that, but even if it was just some red meat for the domestic audience without larger implications, as the Obama administration says, we have ample evidence more directly related to the nuclear talks on which we may make the same conclusion. The latest comes from the head of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency Yukiya Amano. In a recent interview, he noted that Iran has replied to only one of a dozen questions about the "possible military dimensions" of the country's past nuclear activities. He believes that the six powers negotiating with Iran in Switzerland ought to demand unfettered access to the country's nuclear sites, a key tenet of the IAEA's policy since it failed to detect Iraq's nuclear weapons back in the 1980s. Iran ended its compliance with that protocol in 2006. In particular, Amano identifies the Perching complex as being problematic for inspectors. Read More

Yahoo News sends ignoramus to cover Ted Cruz's Liberty University speech Most Americans, at least those with a modicum of education and a passing knowledge of American history, were anything but surprised when Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said this in his speech announcing his candidacy for president of the United States. Read More Sponsored

Sincerely yours, Erick Erickson Editor-in-Chief, RedState